Milwaukee, Wisconsin
What do Republican primary voters want in their next president? I tried to figure this out from the floor of their first presidential debate — and left with more questions than answers.
We had to get to this arena hours ahead of time. The wait for the night’s festivities felt like it was longer than Oppenheimer — and there was definitely more action on stage.
If this debate was any indication, some of what voters wanted was a lot of Nikki Haley, sometimes it was a lot of Mike Pence — and hell, sometimes it was even a lot of Doug Burgum.
But at other times, those same candidates (sans Burgum, who skated by without any boos, but certainly including Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson) were heartily booed. What struck me, and a lot of the attendees I caught up with during commercial breaks, was the wild inconsistencies of the boos. Ramaswamy certainly brought an excited crowd decked out in colonial garb, but at times it felt like everyone was ganging up on him despite the torrent of boos that would sometimes follow from his fans.
But: the boos made no sense! They were pro-Trump and anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine and anti-Ukraine, pro-life and pro-er-life.
At times the chippiness of the audience definitely made it to the debate stage itself. “This is a lightning round, not rolling thunder,” Bret Baier reminded participants in a lightning round towards the end. Ramaswamy in particular cut people off time after time, coming across as a high-school debate captain eager to be on the big stage.
There was no virtual stronger from the debate audience than when Nikki Haley shut Ramaswamy down on foreign policy, specifically over his inexperience and desire to cut aid off from Israel. I’m not sure what it sounded like watching on TV, but in the audience we simply couldn’t hear Ramaswamy respond.
Ramaswamy let the boos mostly brush off his shoulders, bashing everyone else on the stage for being career politicians. One of those career politicians, Asa Hutchinson, was loudly booed when talking about the horrors inflicted by Russia on Ukraine during its invasion. His fellow career politician, Chris Christie, touted his experience in law enforcement to repeatedly attack the former president, Donald Trump — to intense booing at times.
Christie took an approach that reminded me of “your boos don’t bother me, I’ve seen what makes you cheer.”
At times there were also laughs “I get the UFO question?” Christie asked with incredulity. In Tim Scott’s closing statement, he even got two rounds of laughs. Once when he reminded the audience that men should play sports against biological men and not women, and again when he sneakily asked for donations.
But at times, Scott faded into the bushes like Homer Simpson. “Tim Scott was in the witness protection program for the middle hour,” Congressman Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota’s best (and worst!) representative in Congress, told me. And while DeSantis had strong moments, it felt like he vanished at times as well.
Laughter aside, the debate was dominated by cheers and boos, and those cheers, like the boos, were all over the place. A massive applause rocked the Fiserv Forum when Ron DeSantis bragged about his track record of throwing left-wing prosecutors funded by George Soros out of office, when most of the candidates bashed Ramaswamy, and even when the moderators mentioned Governor Burgum’s name.
On the way out I grabbed Representative Glenn Grothman, a loyal Spectator reader, who declared DeSantis the night’s winner, but said that if an election were held today, Trump would carry his district located right outside Milwaukee with a plurality.
When I landed in Wisconsin, I had a little cramp in my neck from the flights. After leaving the arena, I have full blown whiplash. Can’t wait for the next one.
